


Leavetaking

by SilverDagger



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bittersweet, F/F, Ficlet, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3916393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night before the start of their five year mission, Uhura and Gaila find some time to say goodbye to the place they'll be leaving behind. (Set after the first movie, ignoring ST:ID canon)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leavetaking

Uhura finds Gaila sitting on their old dorm's back steps the evening before their scheduled departure, with a PADD unattended by her side and her face tilted skywards. She's in Terran civilian clothes, frayed jeans and a too large button-up shirt, and she looks good like that, at ease with herself in a way Uhura sometimes wishes she could be.

"Hey, stranger," Gaila says, patting the stairs in invitation. "What's up?"

Uhura cracks a smile at the outdated English expression - no doubt gleaned from historical fiction, the kind Gaila likes, sketching out Earth's past before the Eugenics Wars took hold. Not much memory of that time survives, but from what she can tell, Gaila prefers the romance novel version anyway, all dieselpunk weaponry and bloodthirsty pirate glamour. Uhura herself doesn't much prefer the romance novel version of anything, but from time to time, she can see the appeal.

"Nothing much," she says. "Thinking about tomorrow, mostly." She sits, stretching her aching legs and rolling her shoulders to ease out the tension. Gaila leans against her, the kind of unprompted physical contact that Uhura's still getting used to - not because it bothers her, but because she's surprised, every time, by how easily anyone can slip into her space and manage to belong there.

They sit like that for a while, the two of them alone on a campus that's emptier than it used to be and feels emptier than it is, like a stage after the play is over. The air smells like cut grass and dirt, like Earth, and that thought hits her with unexpected melancholy. She's been waiting for tomorrow for what feels like centuries, counting the days until they'll let her into the sky again, and now that the day is here, there's a part of her that doesn't want to leave this planet behind. She breathes deep, taking in the scent of trees and growing things, Gaila's floral shampoo and the subtler traces of Orion pheromones, and wonders whether or not Gaila feels the same.

It's impossible to say. Gaila's an open book, most of the time, but she hides her thoughts so easily when she wants to, and part of the difficulty is that you can never tell whether she wants to or not. But Earth was never home to her, not the way it is to the rest of them, and maybe that makes all the difference.

"You're not nervous, are you?" Gaila asks, not quite teasing, not entirely serious.

"Nervous? Me? I'm constitutionally incapable of nerves. You?"

"Me?" Gaila says, and laughs. "I'm not like you, you know. I wasn't born with dirt beneath my feet." And it's code, Uhura thinks, and like everything else, it would be so much easier if Gaila would only give her the key, but she never does. Old habit, maybe. Maybe she just likes watching Uhura puzzle everything out herself.

"I am going to miss these trees, though," Gaila says, and Uhura wonders if, despite her protestations, she hasn't grown attached to this place after all.

Uhura nods. "There's a lot of things I'm going to miss."

"Like?"

"Sunsets," she says. "Long showers. Non-replicated chocolate. That place on Cochrane with the five-credit cocktails."

 _The ground beneath my feet,_ she doesn't say. _My hometown._

Gaila shifts a little closer, until they're sitting knee to knee and hip to hip, and Uhura gets the sense that maybe she's picked up on it anyway. She rests her head on Uhura's shoulder with a hum of agreement, and says, "it's not so bad, living among the stars. As long as you're free, it's better than being earthbound."

Gaila doesn't talk about her spacefaring days often, the time between slavery and Starfleet, and Uhura doesn't often ask. Gaila likes to live in the moment, sometimes the future, never the past. _It's better that way,_ she told Uhura once, at a beach party beneath summer constellations, somewhere in a haze of salt and alcohol and lowered inhibitions. _Without regret._ But once in a while she's got something to say about the things she doesn't usually talk about, and when she does, it's always worth listening.

There's something soft in her voice this time, a wistful note that isn't often there, and never for very long. Uhura looks at the rising sliver of the moon above the trees, thinking of bare station corridors strung with cables and wiring, the pirate hulks and smaller, faster smuggling vessels. All those places and ships Gaila told her about once, late at night in her own whispered language, too quiet to carry any further than the few inches of heated space between them. She remembers Gaila's hands, rough with a mechanic's callouses, and Gaila's voice low in her ear, and she has to close her eyes at the force of the memory. 

"From what you've told me, it seems - " she pauses, caught in one of those rare times when she doesn't know the word for what she means.

"Cold," she settles on. "Or... empty, maybe. Lonely."

"It is," Gaila says. "But only if you've got no one up there with you."

"I know," she says, and she does, but it doesn't matter either way. It's where she wants to be, out there chasing the infinite, and she'll remember that soon enough. Tonight, she has time to think about the trees, the ocean, one kind of freedom bartered for another. Tomorrow - no regrets.

"What I'm saying," Gaila says, twisting to face her, "is that you won't be alone. You won't be cold."

It seems like an impetuous promise, from someone who hates tying herself down, but Uhura feels the force of it and knows suddenly that if she said so, Gaila would correct her - not bound together, but there by choice.

 _A gift, then,_ Uhura thinks. She wraps an arm around Gaila's shoulders, hugs her tightly and makes a promise of her own.

"Neither will you."


End file.
